


Addiction

by Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-16
Updated: 2012-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-31 06:57:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/pseuds/Sandrine%20Shaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're both different people now, or at least they pretend to be. (Set post-season 3.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Addiction

Jenny stays away from Chuck for 157 days. She's not counting and neither is he. If someone had asked them, Jenny would have been surprised at how much time had passed since she fled and left Manhattan and the self-destructive girl she had become behind, while Chuck would have assumed that it had been much longer. 

They're both different people now, or at least they pretend to be. Almost dying and losing Blair - again and for good this time - had grounded Chuck in a way, made him less impulsive, less adventurous, but at the same time more cynical. Jenny, post-exile, is writing applications for college, is home by ten each night, and dates a soft-spoken guy from school Rufus approves of. She's healthy and wholesome and sometimes she gets so bored with her new persona that she wants to scream and claw at her skin until she finds the real Jenny underneath. 

And then, at some party or the other that Dan and Serena have dragged her to in the ill-advised but well-meant manner of caring siblings, she spots Chuck nursing a glass of single malt at the bar and she suddenly remembers how he used to make her feel: the sadness and the excitement and the desire and the edge of danger and the self-loathing and the overwhelming loneliness. How he made the numbness go away and replaced it with so many conflicting emotions that she felt like she was torn apart from the inside. A voice at the back of her mind that sounds suspiciously like Dan tells her that this is not a good thing, that all it did was get her hurt. But at this point, she thinks getting hurt might be preferable to not feeling anything at all, and before she's even made a conscious decision to approach him, her feet have carried her over to where Chuck is sitting.

"I'll have what he's having," she tells the bartender, and when Chuck's head snaps around to her, she holds his gaze defiantly and silently dares him to object to her drinking.

He raises his glass to her in a mock-toast. "Jenny Humphrey. I thought you were being a good girl these days."

"Funny. People also say that you're _reformed_. Whatever that means." She raises her glass and takes a sip, never taking her eyes off him. It's bitter on her tongue and burns her throat when she swallows, and she can't say that she enjoys the taste. She takes another gulp nonetheless. 

"It supposedly means not making the same old mistakes again," he says, and it could almost be rejection if it wasn't for the way his eyes linger when he looks at her or the way his body is tilted towards her. It made her feel more alive than she's felt in months, her stomach in knots, excitement and anxiety clashing and making her light-headed.

She forces herself to tear her eyes away from his and focuses on the glass in her hands instead. It's not even half-empty, even though she feels dizzy already. But maybe that has nothing to do with the alcohol at all.

"That doesn't really say anything, does it? It still leaves a million new mistakes to make," she tells Chuck. So cynical, not like the new and improved Jenny Humphrey at all. 

Beside her, he laughs softly. "You would know." 

It sounds oddly like an accusation and she can't have that, not from him. 

"And you don't? There's nothing I've done that you haven't done before, a million times worse." She gulps the rest of the Scotch down, already getting used to the burn.

Chuck shrugs, nonchalantly fiddling with his glass. It's empty, but he doesn't order another. "I'm a simple guy. Making my favourite mistakes over and over again holds more appeal than finding new ones."

Maybe he's talking about Blair. But then again, Blair is somewhere on the other side of the room with her Ivy League boyfriend and Chuck is here with Jenny, so maybe not.

"Not so reformed then," she teases.

He doesn't say anything for a long time, and his gaze is heavy on her, inscrutable, like he's making a decision and doesn't know what it's gonna be yet. She tries her best not to squirm and fidget under the scrutiny, but she finds it impossible to hold his gaze. 

An eternity passes before he concedes, "Maybe not."

He motions at her glass. "Do you want another, or would you rather get out of here?"

It's a casual offer, like he's asking her what kind of wine she wants with her dinner or if she likes her coffee black or with sugar, as if he wasn't thinking of her naked, under him, against him, heated skin brushing heated skin. The gleam in his eyes says otherwise.

Jenny feels giddy, breathless. "Drinking isn't really one of my favourite mistakes." Not like Chuck is, but she doesn't need to vocalize that part for it to be understood. She sets down the glass and gets up, following Chuck outside, feeling a little more like herself with every step she makes.

End.


End file.
